to the best of the boy's knowledge the man who had adopted him was never seen again; but it took some time to assume the fact that he was dead. visitors to new york often dived below the surface, to come up again a week or ten days later. their experience in these absences they were not always eager to discuss.
"why, i've knowed 'em to stay away that long as yer'd swear they'd been kidnapped," mr. honeybun informed the boy. "he's on a little time; that's all. nothink but nat'rel to a man of his age—and a widower—livin' in the country—when he gits a bit of freedom in the city."
"yes, but what'll he do for money?"
there was this point of view, to be sure. mr. goodsir suggested that quidmore had had more money still, that he had only left this sum to cover tom's expenses while he was away.
"and listen, son," he continued, kindly, "that's a terr'ble big wad for a boy like you to wear on his person. why, there's guys that free-quents this very house that'd rob and murder you for half as much, and never drop a tear. now here i am, an old trusty man, accustomed to handle funds, and not sneak nothin' for myself. if i could be of any use to you in takin' charge of it like...."
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"me and you'll talk this over, later," mr. honeybun intervened, tactfully. "the kid don't need no one to take care of his cash when his father may skin home again before to-night. let's wait a bit. if he's goin' to trust anybody it'll be us, his next of kin in this 'ere 'ouse, of course. that'd be so, kiddy, wouldn't it?"
tom replied that it would be so, giving them to understand that he counted on their good offices. for the present he was keeping himself in the non-committal attitude natural to suspense.
"you see," he explained, looking from one to another, with his engaging candor, "i can't do anything but just wait and see if he's coming back again, at any rate, not for a spell."
the worthies going to their work, the interview ended. at least, mr. goodsir went to his work, though within a few minutes mr. honeybun was back in tom's room again.
"say, kid; don't you let them three hundred bucks out'n yer own 'and. i can't stop now; but when i blow in to eat at noon i'll tell yer what i'd do with 'em, if you was me. keep 'em buttoned up in yer inside pocket; and don't 'ang round in this old hut any more'n you can help till i come back and git you. yer never knows who's on the same floor with yer; but out in the street yer'll be safe."
out in the street he kept to the more populous thoroughfares, coasting the line of docks especially. he liked them. on the façades of the low buildings he could read names which distilled romance into syllables—new orleans, savannah, galveston, texas,
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arizona, oklahoma. he had always been fond of geography. it opened up the world. it told of countries and cities he would one day visit, and which in the meantime he could dream about. over the low roofs of the dock buildings he could see the tops of funnels. here and there was the long black flank of a steamer at its pier. there were flags flying from one masthead or another, while exotic seafaring types slipped in and out amid the crush of vehicles, or dodged the freight train aimlessly shunting up and down. the movement and color, the rumble of deep sound, the confused world-wide purpose of it all, the knowledge that he himself was so insignificant a figure that no robber or murderer would suspect that he had all that money buttoned against his breast, dulled his mind to his desolation.
he tried to keep moving so as to make it seem to a suspicious populace that he was an errand boy; but now and then the sense of his loneliness smote him to a standstill. he would wonder where he was going, and what he was going for, as he wondered the same thing about the steamer on the hudson. like her, he seemed to be afloat. she, of course, had her destination; but he had nothing in the world to tie up to. he seemed to have heard of a ship that was always sailing—sailing—sailing—sailing—with never a port to have come out of, and never a port in view,
the church of the sea!
he read the words on the corner of a big white building where jane street flows toward the docks. he read them again. he read them because he liked
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their suggestions—immensity, solitude, danger perhaps, and god!
"that's a terr'ble big wad for a boy like you to wear"
it was queer to think of god being out there, where there were only waves and ships and sailors, but chiefly waves and a few seabirds. it recalled the religion of crippled bertie tollivant, the cynic. to the instructed like himself, god was in the churches that had steeples and pews and strawberry sociables, or in the parlors where they held family prayers. they told you that he was everywhere; but that only meant that you couldn't do wrong, you couldn't swear, or smoke a cigarette, or upset some householder's ash-barrels, without his spotting you. tom quidmore did not believe that mr. and mrs. tollivant would have sanctioned this church of the sea, where god was as free as wind, and over you like the sky, and beyond any human power to monopolize or give away. it made him too close at hand, too easy to find, and probably much too tender toward sailors, who were often drunk, and homeless little boys. he turned away from the church of the sea, secretly envying bertie tollivant his graceless creed, but not daring to question the wisdom of adult men and women.
by the steps of the chop saloon he waited for mr. honeybun, who came swinging along, a strong and supple figure, a little after the whistle blew at twelve. to the boy's imagination, now that he had been informed as to his friend's status, he looked like what had been defined to him as a socialist. that is, he had the sort of sinuosity that could slip through half-open windows, or wriggle in at coal-holes, or glide
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noiselessly up and down staircases. it was ridiculous to say it of one so bony and powerful, but the spring of his step was spiritlike.
"good for you, lad, to be waitin'! we'll go right along and do it, and then it'll be off our minds."
what "it" was to be, tom had no idea. but then he had no suspicions. in spite of his hard childhood, it did not occur to him that grown-up men would do him wrong. he had no fear of mr. honeybun, and no mistrust, not any more than a baby in arms has fear or mistrust of its nurse.
"and there's another thing," mr. honeybun brought up, as they went along. "it don't seem to me no good for a husky boy like you to be just doin' nothink, even while he's waitin' for his pop. i'd git a job, if you was me."
the boy said that he would gladly have a job, but didn't know how to get one.
"i've got one for yer if yer'll take it. work not too 'ard, and' ll bring you in a dollar and a 'alf a day."
but "it" was the matter in hand, and presently its nature became evident. at the corner of fourteenth street and eighth avenue mr. honeybun pointed across to a handsome white-stone building, whose very solidity inspired confidence. tom could read for himself that it was a savings bank.
"now what i'd do if it was my wad is this. i'd put three hundred and twenty-five of it in that there bank, which'd leave yer more'n twenty-five for yer eddication. but yer principal, no one won't be able
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to touch it but yerself, and twice a year yer'll be gettin' yer interest piled up on top of it."
tom's heart leaped. he had long meditated on savings banks. they had been part of his queer vision. to become "something big" he would have to begin by opening some such account as this. with mr. honeybun's proposal he felt as if he had suddenly grown taller by some inches, and older by some years.
"you'll come over with me, won't you?"
mr. honeybun demurred. "well, yer see, kid, i'm a pretty remarkable character in this neighborhood. there's lots knows honey lem; and if they was to see me go in with you they might think as yer hadn't come by your dough quite hon—i mean, accordin' to yer conscience—or they might be bad enough to suppose as there was a put-up job between us. when i puts a few dollars into my own savings bank—i'm a savin' bird, i am—i goes right over to brooklyn, where there ain't no wicked mind to suspeck me. so go in by yerself, and say yer wants to open a account. if anyone asks yer, tell him just how the money come to yer, and i don't believe as yer'll run no chanst of no one not believin' yer."
so it was done. tom came out of the building with his bank book buttoned into his breast pocket, and a conscious enhancement of life.
"and now," mr. honeybun suggested, "we'll make tracks for pappa's and eat."
the "check," like the meal, was light, and mr. honeybun paid it. tom protested, since he had
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money of his own, but his host took the situation gracefully.
"lord love yer, kid, ain't i yer next o' kin, as long as yer guv'nor's away? who sh'd buy yer a lunch if it wasn't me?"
childhood is naturally receptive. as romulus and remus took their food from a wolf when there was no one else to give it them, so tom quidmore found it not amazing to be nourished, first by a murderer, and then by a thief. it became amazing, a few years later, on looking back on it; but for the moment murderer and thief were not the terms in which he thought of those who had been kind to him.
not that he didn't try. he tried that very afternoon. when his next o' kin had gone back to his job of lifting and heaving in the gansevoort market, he returned to the empty room. it was his first return to it alone. when he had gone up from his breakfast in the chop saloon both goodsir and honeybun had accompanied him. now the emptiness was awesome, and a little sinister.
he had slept there the previous night, slept fitfully that is, waking every half hour to listen for the shuffling footstep. he heard other footsteps, dragging, thumping, staggering, but they always passed on to the story above, whence would come a few minutes later the sound of heavy boots thrown on the floor. now and then there were curses, or male voices raised in a wrangle, or a few bars of a drunken song. during the earlier nights he had slept through these signals of pappa's hospitality, or if he had waked, he knew that a grown-up man lay in the other bed, so
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that he was safe. now he could only lie and shudder, till the sounds died down, and silence implied safety. he did his best to keep awake, so as to unlock the door the instant he heard a knock; but in spite of his efforts he slept.
this return after luncheon brought him for the first time face to face with his state as a reality. there was no one there. it was no use going back to bere, because there would be no one there. rather than become again a state ward with the tollivants, he would sell himself to slavery. what was he to do?
the first thing his eye fell upon was his father's suitcase, lying open on the floor beside the bed, its contents in disorder. it was the way quidmore kept it, fishing out a shirt or a collar as he needed one. the futility of this clothing was what struck the boy now. the peculiar grief of handling the things intimately used by those who will never use them again was new to him. he had never supposed that so much sorrow could be stored in a soiled handkerchief. stooping over the suitcase, he had accidentally picked one up, and burst into sudden tears. they were the first he had actually shed since he used to creep away to cry by himself in the heart-lonely life among the tollivants.
it occurred to him now that he had not cried when his adopted mother disappeared. he had not especially mourned for her. while she had been there, and he was daily face to face with her, he had loved her in the way in which he loved so easily when anyone opened the heart to him; but she had been no part of his inner life. she was the cloud and sunshine
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of a day, to be forgotten in the cloud and a sunshine of the morrow. of the two, he grieved more for the man; and the man was a murderer, and probably a suicide.
sitting on the edge of his bed, he used these words in the attempt to work up a fortifying moral indignation. it was then, too, that he called mr. honeybun a thief. he must react against these criminal associations. he must stand on his own feet. he was not afraid of earning his own living. he had heard of boys who had done it at an age even earlier than thirteen, and had ended by being millionaires. they had always, however, so far as he knew, had some sort of ties to connect them with the body politic. they had had the support of families, sympathies, and backgrounds. they hadn't been adrift, like that haunting ship which never knew a port, and none but the god of the sea to keep her from foundering. he could have believed in this god of the sea. he wished there had been such a god. but the god that was, the god who was shut up in churches and used only on sundays, was not of much help to him. any help he got he must find for himself; and the first thing he must do would be to break away from these low-down companionships.
and just as, after two or three hours of meditation, he had reached this conclusion, a tap at the door made him start. quidmore had come back! but before he could spring to the door it was gently pushed open, and he saw the patch over the left eye.
"got away early, son. now, seems to me, we ought to be out after them overalls."
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the boy stood blank. "what overalls?"
"why, for yer job to-morrow. yer can't work in them good clo'es. yer'd sile 'em."
in a second-hand shop, known to honey lem, in charles street, they found a suit of boy's overalls not too much the worse for wear. honey lem pulled out a roll of bills and paid for them.
"but i've got my own money, mr. honeybun."
"dooty o' next o' kin, boy. i ain't doin' it for me own pleasure. yer'll need yer money for yer eddication. yer mustn't forgit that."
the overalls bound him more closely to the criminal from whom he was trying to cut loose. more closely still he found himself tied by the scraps of talk he overheard between the former pals that evening. they were on the lowest of the steps leading up from the chop saloon, where all three of them had dined. tom, who had preceded them, stood on the sidewalk overhead, out of sight and yet within earshot.
"i tell yer i can't, goody," mr. honeybun was saying, "not as long as i'm next o' kin to this 'ere kid. 'twouldn't be fair to a young boy for me to keep no such company."
mr. goodsir made some observation the nature of which tom could only infer from mr. honeybun's response.
"well, don't yer suppose it's a damn sight 'arder for me to be out'n a good thing than it is for you to see me out'n it? i don't go in for no renounciation. but when yer've got a fatherless kid on yer 'ands ye' must cut out a lot o' nice stuff that'll go all right
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when yer've only yerself to think about. ain't yer a christian, goody?"
once more mr. goodsir's response was to tom a matter of surmise.
"well, then, goody, if yer don't like it yer can go to e and double l. what's more, i ain't a-goin' to sleep in our own room to-night, nor any night till that guy comes back. i'm goin' to sleep in the kid's room, and keep him company. 'tain't right to leave a young boy all by hisself in a 'ouse like this, as full o' toughs as a ward'll be full o' politicians."
tom removed himself to a discreet distance, but the knowledge that the other bed in his room would not remain so creepily vacant was consciously a relief. he slept dreamlessly that night, because of his feeling of security. in the morning, not long after four, he was wakened by a hand that rocked him gently to and fro.
"come, little shaver! time to git up! got to be on yer job at five."
the job was in a market that was not exactly a market since it supplied only the hotels. together with the gansevoort and west washington markets, it seemed to make a focal point for much of the food on the continent of america. railways and steamers brought it from ranches and farms, from plantations and orchards, from rivers and seas, from slaughter-stockades and cold-storage warehouses, from the north and the south and the west, from the tropics and farther than the tropics, to feed the vast digestive machine which is the basis of new york's energies. tom's job was not hard, but it was incessant. his
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was the duty of collecting and arranging the empty cases, crates, baskets, and coops, which were dumped on the raised platform surrounding the building on the outside, or which cluttered the stalls within. trucks and vans took them away full on one day, and brought them back empty on another. it was all a boy could do to keep them stacked, and in order, according to sizes and shapes. the sizes in the main were small; the shapes were squares and oblongs and diminishing churnlike cylinders. nimbleness, neatness, and goodwill were the requisites of the task, and all three of them the boy supplied.
fatigue that night made him wakeful. his companion in the other bed was wakeful too. in talking from bed to bed tom found it a comfort to be dealing with an easy conscience. mr. honeybun had nothing on his mind, nor was he subject to nightmares. speculation on the subject of quidmore's disappearance, and possible fate, turned round and round on itself, to begin again with the selfsame guesses.
"and there's another thing," came from mr. honeybun. "if he don't come back, why, you'll come in for a good bit o' proputty, won't yer? didn't he own that market-garden place, out there on the edge of connecticut?"
"he left it to his sister. he told me that the other night. you see, i wasn't his real son. i wasn't his son at all till about a year ago."
this statement coming to mr. honeybun as something of a shock, tom was obliged to tell the story of his life to the extent that he knew it. the only details that he touched on lightly were those which
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bore on the manner in which he had lost his "mudda." even now it was difficult to name her in any other way, because in no other way had he ever named her. obliged to blur the outlines of his earliest recollections, which in themselves were clear enough, his tale was brief.
"so yer real name is whitelaw," mr. honeybun commented, with interest. "i never hear that name but once. that was the whitelaw baby. ye'll have heard tell o' that?"
since tom had never heard tell of the whitelaw baby, the lack in his education was supplied. the whitelaw baby had been taken out to the park on a morning in may, and had vanished from its carriage. in the place where it had lain was found a waxen image so true in likeness to the child himself that only when it came time to feed him did the nurse make the discovery that she had wheeled home a replica. the mystery had been the source of nation-wide excitement for the best part of two years. it was talked of even now. it couldn't have been more than three or four years earlier that mr. honeybun had seen a daily paper, bearing the headlines that harry whitelaw had been found, selling like hotcakes to the women shopping in twenty-third street.
"and was he?" tom asked, beginning at last to be sleepy.
"no more'n a puff of tobacker smoke when yer'd blowed it in the air. the father, a rich banker—a young chap he was, too, i believe—he offers a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone as'd put him on the track o' the gang what had kidnapped the young
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'un; and every son of a gun what thought he was a socialist was out to win the money. this 'ere goody, he had a scheme. tried to work me in on it, and i don't know but what i might a took a 'and if a chum o' mine hadn't got five year for throwin' the same 'ook without no bait on it. they 'auled in another chap i knowed, what they was sure he had somethink to do with it, and tried to make him squeal; but—" a long breath from tom interrupted this flow of narrative. "say, kiddy, yer ain't asleep, are yer? and me tellin' yer about the whitelaw baby?"
"i am nearly," the boy yawned. "good night—honey! wake me in time in the morning."
"that's a good name for yer to call me," the next o' kin commended. "i'll always be honey to you, and you'll be kiddy to me; and so we'll be pals. buddies they call it over here."
echoes of a street brawl reached them through the window. had he been alone, the country lad of thirteen would have shivered, even though the night was hot. but the knowledge of this brawny companion, lying but a few feet away, nerved him to curl up like a puppy, and fall asleep trustfully.
